Month: March 2016

California’s giant trees are showing unprecedented die-back, and land managers who are already battling drought, warming and fire are racing to save them.

Los Padres National Forest firefighters watch a controlled burn on the so-called “rough fire” in the Sequoia National Forest in California. New research indicates the drought is hitting these ancient trees particularly hard. Photograph: Max Whittaker/Reuters.

Last September, US Geological Survey ecologist Nate Stephenson hiked into Sequoia National Park’s Giant Forest to look for dying seedlings. California was suffering through its third year of severe drought, and trees were dying in the park in greater numbers than usual. The roadside leading up to Giant Forest was pin cushioned with trees faded brown – dead oaks, sugar pine, fir, incense cedar. But the forest’s namesake trees, which are among the world’s oldest and largest, were faring better. They’re tough – they have to be to live for thousands of years – and tend to grow in the wettest parts of the landscape.

THE STORY: Amanda Wingfield is a faded, tragic remnant of Southern gentility who lives in poverty in a dingy St. Louis apartment with her son, Tom, and her daughter, Laura. Amanda strives to give meaning and direction to her life and the lives of her children, though her methods are ineffective and irritating. Tom is driven nearly to distraction by his mother’s nagging and seeks escape in alcohol and the world of the movies. Laura also lives in her illusions. She is crippled, and this defect, intensified by her mother’s anxiety to see her married, has driven her more and more into herself. The crux of the action comes when Tom invites a young man of his acquaintance to take dinner with the family. Jim, the caller, is a nice ordinary fellow who is at once pounced upon by Amanda as a possible husband for Laura. In spite of her crude and obvious efforts to entrap the young man, he and Laura manage to get along very nicely, and momentarily Laura is lifted out of herself into a new world. But this crashes when, toward the end, Jim explains that he is already engaged. The world of illusion that Amanda and Laura have striven to create in order to make life bearable collapses about them. Tom, too, at the end of his tether, at last leaves home.

One of the non-profits Chip Thomas supports is Honor the Treaties. They are an organization dedicated to amplifying the voices of Indigenous communities through art and advocacy by funding collaborations between Native artists and Native advocacy groups so that their messages can reach a wider audience. Chip Thomas is one of several high profile allies including John Densmore, Daryl Hannah, and Peter Yarrow. Read more here.

Chip Thomas’ Just Seeds bio includes an impressive list of interests including Anti-War, Culture & Media, Education, Environment & Climate, Global Solidarity, Health, Indigenous Resistance, Inspiration, Police & Prisons, Racial Justice, and Social Movement. With members working across North America, Just Seeds believes in the transformative power of personal expression in concert with collective action. Read more here.

Begun by Chip Thomas in 2012, the Painted Desert Project connects public artists with communities through mural opportunities on the Navajo Nation. In an effort to boost tourism on the reservation, to supplement the incomes of families with roadside stands, and to nurture the creative talent of local youth, Chip Thomas invited a few world-renowned street artists to come to the Navajo Nation to paint murals in 2012 and has continued doing so as funding allows. Click here to see a map of mural sites across northern Arizona. Map of Mural Sites

If you travel across the rural Navajo Nation you may find yourself rubbernecking out the window at giant street art. Murals created from photographic images of Navajo people appear on water towers, roadside stands, even abandoned houses.

May it be beautiful before me. May it be beautiful behind me. May it be beautiful below me. May it be beautiful above me. May it be beautiful all around me. In beauty it is finished. In beauty it is finished.

Lines from the Navajo Night Chant and prayer

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​Photo is Courtesy of Chip Thomas, All Rights Reserved

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Speaking @ GCC on

Friday, March 25th

12 pm to 1:30pm in the Student Union

“His artwork is humble, peaceful, and full of life.

It has a spirit: It’s alive and speaks to you, creating a connection.”

~Jerilyn Yazzie, GCC Student

Chip Thomas started working in a small community between the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley called Inscription House in 1987. He’d always been drawn to photography and built a darkroom shortly after arriving on the Navajo Nation. His passion photographically is shooting black and white in a documentary style inspired by people like Eugene Smith, Eugene Richards, Joseph Koudelka and others. Going out and spending time with people in their homes and family camps, Thomas has come to know his patients as friends, and found the visits enhanced doctor/patient relationships by helping him be a more empathetic health care practitioner.

Drawn to street art, graffiti and old school hip-hop, Chip was attracted to the energy of the culture in the 80s. Though miles away from the epicenter, he thought of myself as a charter member of the Zulu Nation and would travel to New York City to see graffiti on trains, on buildings and in galleries.

A trip to Brasil in 2009 coincided with a difficult period in Chip’s life. Though not wasn’t looking for an epiphany, he was fortunate to stumble upon a passionate group of artists working on the street who befriended him. It was during this time that Chip began to appreciate how photography could be a street art form. Infatuated with the feeling he got being with the artists in Salvador do Bahia, he wanted to find a way to keep that vibe going and began pasting images along the roadsides of the Navajo reservation in June 2009. Read more here.

Chip Thomas does murals all over the world! He has done numerous collaborations and this is just one of the many. Jetsonorama created this piece in Brooklyn, New York, this a collaboration with Dan Budnik. Budnik is an American photographer noted for his photos of artists, photos of the Civil Rights Movement, and Native American life.

Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, James “Chip” Thomas like his father became a medical doctor. While attending Nashville’s Meharry Medical College, one of the nation’s oldest and largest historically black academic health science centers dedicated to educating physicians, he led First Aid teams in Liberia during the summers. As an African American, visiting Africa had a profound effect on the young Dr. Thomas. He would return again to Africa a few years later to join a medical team trekking the length Africa. A 12,107-mile cycling trip, completed in record time, earned Chip’s team a record spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Committed to universal and public health, In 1987 Chip signed a 4-year contract to practice medicine on the Navajo reservation in a government run facility. He saw himself returning to a developing country later on, but began to appreciate the parallels between Africa and the Navajo Nation. He fell in love with the people and the land. Almost three decades later, Dr. Chip Thomas still resides on tribal lands in Northern Arizona treating Navajo patients in a rural community.

Dr. Thomas has said that his work as a physician brings him both happiness and sadness. Photography became a way that he could help reconcile the dualities of medical practice into art that restored balance and reflected back the beauty that he saw around him.